Korea Suggests Analytical Approach Towards Match Fixing

Based on the law, Dr. Choi’s statistical approach will suggest that lower numbers like 1 or 2 are more likely to be the first digit in various sports data, such as the number of strikeouts or walks in a baseball game, the number of kicks in a Taekwondo match, or the number of rallies in a badminton game. (image: KobizMedia/ Korea Bizwire)

SEOUL, Oct. 18 (Korea Bizwire) –A symposium taking place on October 20 and 21 at Korea National Sport University (KNSU) will focus predominantly on one subject: a statistical approach to detecting match fixing.

Although match fixing is a persistent issue faced by the sports industry, because is often done discreetly between individuals, the activities usually go unnoticed and undetected.

The statistical approach to be discussed during the symposium is based on an idea that a record of such illicit pursuits could be found using sports match data, providing an important lead to potential match fixing.

Dr. Choi Chang-hwan from KNSU is expected to make the main presentation, and will suggest using Benford’s law, or the first-digit law, to find clues to match fixing. According to Benford’s law, the first digit of a naturally occurring collection of numbers is likely to be small – usually number 1 roughly 30 percent of the time.

Based on the law, Dr. Choi’s statistical approach will suggest that lower numbers like 1 or 2 are more likely to be the first digit in various sports data, such as the number of strikeouts or walks in a baseball game, the number of kicks in a Taekwondo match, or the number of rallies in a badminton game.

In fact, the number of rallies for badminton players tends to follow the first-digit law, according to Choi’s analysis of 685 international matches, whereas it wasn’t so for matches suspected of rigging.

Such was the case during the 2012 London Olympics, when Chinese women’s badminton duo (Wang Xiaoli / Yu Yang) deliberately lost to a Korean pair (Jung Kyung-eun / Kim Ha-na) to manipulate their draw for the knockout stage, said Choi.

“At the moment we can only confirm the actuality of match fixing after a police investigation into financial transactions,” he said. “But using Benford’s law can help with primary filtering of potential match fixing cases.”

The symposium will be attended by the KOC (Korea Olympic Committee), KSME (Korean Society of Measurement and Evaluation for Physical Education and Sports Science), multi-national sports data firm Sportradar, and other overseas experts and professional from the sports industry.

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